Joytime Killbox

by Brian Wood

  Hiram cupped his hand in the fishbowl. He waited for Batman and Robin to eddy into his palm before he ladled them out of the bowl. As gentle as he did at the fair, he brought his fish to the toilet bowl. He poured them from his hands. Their tails flapped, as if shocked by the coolness of the porcelain. They swam the circumference of the bowl.

  “Rules are rules,” his father said.

  Hiram swallowed. He watched the fish peck at the surface.

  “Go on. Come ahead now.”

  Hiram could feel the unopened fish food in his back pocket. He just wanted to feed them, to see them dance around collecting the flakes. The thought of it made his chin shake.

  “Get on with it.”

  Hiram did not look away. As the water flushed he watched them fight against the current. He watched as their sparkled bodies swirled into darkness.

  A Taste of Meat

  Tutu raked his beak through the plate of lettuce. He chirped and shook his head. Lettuce flung across the counter. He rained salad to the floor.

  “I don’t think he likes it,” the cook said. “I got seeds in the pantry.”

  “No,” Hiram said. “Bird’s going to learn to keep clean. He’ll eat every scrap he gets.” Hiram went to Tutu. He took a pen from his breast pocket and forced the bird’s mouth open. “Eat.” He shoved a pinch of lettuce into the beak.

  Tutu screeched and flapped his wings. His tongue fought against the pen. Lettuce flew from the plate. Hiram packed the beak with more. “I said eat it.”

  As he put his fingers in the bird’s mouth his pen slipped. Taking advantage of the momentary freedom, Tutu clamped down on Hiram’s pinkie. His beak snapped through the skin like teeth through a cooked sausage. He clawed at Hiram’s hand and vised his beak down to the bone. Hiram tugged his hand free. The tip of his finger dangled from the knuckle. Tutu jumped to the floor. He scuttled to the corner and rolled onto his back, claws out. Beak open and ready to fight. As Hiram’s scream melted with the shouts and animal roar of the cafeteria hall, Tutu shook with fear.

  Interview with Dr. Preston Beamon, Animal Psychologist

  Q. Now, in your own words, why are you here?

  A. ---

  Q. You understand you’re safe here, Tutu. You can open up to me. Feel free to explore, to express yourself. Now, with those ground rules, tell me, what did you do?

  A. ---

  Q. Alright, I see. Right. You haven’t done anything, so you have nothing to say. Now we’re getting somewhere. You feel innocent. I get that. Then how has this experience changed you? How has your incarceration shaped you as a bird?

  A. ---

  Q. Hmmm. I understand it’s a tough question. It requires us to look inside ourselves. And that can be a scary place. Hey, it’s still scary for me to explore my inner space. Some frightening things in there. Perhaps there’s a mother who wouldn’t give us approval? A father who wasn’t there? Did an uncle touch us in a bad way? I’ve heard it all, Tutu. I’m not here to judge you. I’m here to help you … discover you. Okay?

  A. ---

  Q. So what I want you to do is close your eyes. Go on. Close them. Picture yourself at a park, or at the beach—really any place you like—somewhere outside these walls. Can you picture it? Do you have your place?

  A. ---

  Q. Now, in the surrounding comfort of that place, wherever that may be, I want you to look down inside yourself. Go on and get in there. I’ll give you a moment. Got it?

  A. ---

  Q. Now tell me what’s down there. Don’t be afraid, Tutu. What do you see?

  A. ---

  Q. Tutu. I’m a patient man. You can sit there and blink at me all you want. But I am going to reach you. You understand that, right?

  A. ---

  Q. You can be a tough guy. That’s fine. But you must realize that without an answer, I have to notate that you’re unwilling to cooperate. “Inmate was unresponsive when questioned. Inmate showed no outward signs of remorse.” Is that fair, accurate?

  A. ---

  Q. Look, I’ve been more than clear that I’m a friend here. So I’m picking up my pen and asking you one last time. What have you learned from your experience here?

  A. ---

  Q. Have it your way. I’m taking note of this … Alright, let’s move on. I’m not saying this was a failure, just an area for us to improve. It’s an area of opportunity, okay?

  A. ---

  Q. Fine, look, let’s try an exercise. Just a second, let me grab my briefcase … Now, this appears to be an orange. It is round, orange in color. When you smell it … it smells citrusy. By all empirical measures this is an orange. Heck, I pulled it out of my lunch bag, right?

  A. ---

  Q. But in all seriousness, Tutu, this is not an orange. Let’s imagine this is your anger. Everybody, myself included, has some amount of hate inside. And our hate and anger has a source. It can be from something we don’t understand or something we fear. Sometimes it’s passed down from our parents. So what I want you to do is take all your anger and pull it from yourself. Release all your hatred and put it into this orange. Here, I’ll put the orange in front of you so you can project onto it. Take time to channel your anger into the object … Have you emptied yourself?

  A. ---

  Q. I’ll take that as a yes. Now, what do you want to say to your anger?

  A. ---

  Q. Tutu, please. Will you please not peck at the orange?

  A. ---

  Q. Come on, Tutu. I want you to speak to your anger. Hey, come on. We’re not supposed to eat our anger. You’re getting juice everywhere. We don’t want to put the hate back inside you. Understand?

  A. ---

  Q. Hey, stop that. I said quit it. Stop biting the anger. Give me back my orange.

  A. ---

  Q. Christ. He bit me. Goddamn bird just—son of a bitch bit me. Carl? Can you restrain him? Shit. I’m bleeding. Hey, I’m bleeding here, man. Can we get something—now?

  A. ---

  Big Bird on the Block

  Two inmates sat in the yard smoking menthols down to the filters.

  “The fuck is up with that bird?” the first one said.

  “Who, Lil’ Rich? He’s cool.”

  “No, the bird. That actual bird.” He pointed his cigarette at the base of the concrete wall. Tutu huddled there, plucking his feathers. He shook his head and combed his beak through the dirt.

  “Man, you don’t know Big Bird?”

  “That his real name?”

  “Hell if I know? Nobody knows his name. I’ve been here a nickel, ain’t heard him say a word.” The second inmate ashed his cigarette downwind. “We call him Big Bird, on account that’s one bird you don’t fuck with.”

  “For real?”

  “Man, you too new to be this stupid. I heard that little birdie straight killed a man. Made one guard transfer out.” He held up his hand and pulled on his pinkie. “Popped it right off.”

  “For real?”

  “Already burned through three psychologists. Won’t even see him anymore. Can’t crack that nut.”

  They watched the parrot rake through the dirt. Tutu held a jagged rock in his beak. He touched the rock’s surface with his tongue. When he realized it wasn’t a seed, he shook his head and picked up another pebble.

  “What you think he’s doing?” the first inmate said.

  The second inmate drew from his cigarette. “Probably figuring who to fuck with next.” He exhaled through his nostrils. “All I know, you see Big Bird come around, you better act right.”

  Tutu hopped to a sunny patch of dirt. He closed his eyes and absorbed the heat. His feathers rippled in the wind. A guard wearing leather gloves approached. As the guard came near he slowed and took on a cautious demeanor. He looked ready to wrangle a python.

  “What’s all that noise?” the first inmate said.

  The second inmate laughed. “Maybe he got a visitor.” Tutu sensed the guard’s footsteps. He stretched his wings to their limit and the guard rec
oiled.

  “Look at that fool,” the second inmate said. “Scared as shit.”

  The first inmate shook his head. “Why don’t he fly away? Man, I had his wings, I’d be gone.”

  As the guard reached toward Tutu again, Tutu gracefully perched himself on the outstretched glove. There was a reverence in the way the guard held the bird. He carried him like he was the Ark, as if the bird contained some unknown power. For a brief moment the yard fell silent. The men racked their weights and ceased their games. They all watched as the guard carried him like a standard. The second inmate felt small in the presence of such a grand thing. He rubbed the side of his face. “Even if they weren’t clipped,” he said, “where would he go?”

  800 Words or Less

  The prison guard removed the receiver from its cradle and placed it in front of Tutu. “Three minutes,” the guard said. “I’m to inform you this conversation is monitored.” He left the bird to speak with his visitor.

  On the other side of the glass was a peculiar looking man. Tutu stretched to look him over. Although he appeared youthful, the man’s hair was thinning. Beneath two strange, longing eyes hung dark bags of skin. The visitor hugged the phone between his shoulder and ear. With his good hand he hoisted his left arm onto the ledge. It rested there motionless.

  Tutu angled his head to the side. His eyes glossed with memory. “Christoph.”

  “Hello, Tutu. Been a long time.”

  Seeing his friend so old and unfamiliar put Tutu at a loss for words.

  “Look at you. You look good.” Christoph tried to smile but only his cheeks moved. “I’m not sure why I waited so long. I guess I knew I wouldn’t have anything good to say.”

  Tutu leaned low toward the glass. He wanted to tell Christoph that he still remembered the good times. He wanted to talk about the promenade and the clean air. But he knew there wasn’t time for sentiment. Christoph wasn’t here for that.

  “So …” Christoph cleared his throat. “Mom died.”

  “Oh, Christoph.” Tutu thought of the first time he saw her from behind the bars of his birdcage, in the back of that cluttered pet store. He remembered her kindness. And the kindness Christoph first showed him. Tutu clicked his tongue.

  Christoph’s face screwed to the side. “I’ve been a terrible friend.” He began to cry. “That should be me in there.” Tutu tilted his head.

  “I could have said something but I didn’t. You asked for my help but I just sat there.”

  “Christoph.” Tutu lowered his head.

  “No, listen.” Christoph smeared tears across his cheek. “I can make it up to you. What if I could get you out of here? You could come live with me. And I could take you back to the park, like we used to. I still have your old cage in the garage.”

  Tutu shook his head. “No, Christoph.”

  Christoph placed the phone on his other ear. He searched Tutu’s face, trying to understand the bird. But he could not. So his face slid into an expression of deep sadness.

  It was a look Tutu knew. It reminded him of the ferrets and the mice of the pet store, the beasts in their cages. And it reminded him of the animals he lived with now. All those sad faces dreaming of flight.

  “Sorry,” Tutu said. He waddled closer and cocked his head toward his old friend. “Sorry, sorry, sorry.”

  Behind him the guard unlocked the door. It groaned against the hinges as he entered to take the bird away.

  “Wait, Tutu?” Christoph yelled into the phone but there was no reply. He wrapped on the glass and called to him again but there was nothing. The line had gone silent.

  DIARY OF A BAD AFTERNOON

  On the origins of first love

  Every artist needs a mentor, a body of work to plunder until they’re ready to go out and create on their own. It is essential that we have an influence. I don’t know who said that, but it certainly seems too commonplace to be uniquely my idea. Either way, on the evening of my seventeenth birthday, I found myself looking down at my candles wondering what to wish for. “More than anything,” I wished, “I want to be a writer. A real writer.”

  But after I blew out the lights and listened to my mother’s exuberant clapping, I knew I didn’t have a prayer. I didn’t have anybody to look up to.

  I first knew the afternoon before the big dinner. We were at the department store shopping for shirts. I watched how he spidered his fingers over the hangers. The way he left the back of his hand on his waist, elbow cocked like a fencer. It all started to add up. My son was queer.

  “Mom, what about this one?” He held the sleeve up to his face. “Goes with my skin tone, right?”

  I gave him an absent stare.

  I could accept a gay son. Perhaps even more. I liked the idea of getting pedicures together. Or maybe he would date a man who could show me how to create a focal point in the living room. How to pillow our sofa. I would like that. And somehow, I believed in my heart, telling my book club that my boy was gay would lend me a new credibility. If I wanted, I could hold fast to a viewpoint that they couldn’t possibly understand without having a gay child of their own.

  “Try it on,” I told him. “Let’s see how it fits.”

  First time I saw her was in the dressing room. I waited with a shirt in my hand. This was the most important day of my life, and I had this heavy feeling that my mom was going to ruin it. I was drumming my hand on the tabletop, when a stunning woman walked behind the counter. Stunning because she wore a combination of clothes I never thought possible. Brown tights, stunning in their tightness. A sheer tunic, stunning in its graceful draping. “Just one?” She wore a headband that would have looked odd on anyone else. But on her, she was transformed into a bohemian beauty. “You have more?”

  “No,” I said. “Just this.” I gave her the shirt.

  I’m embarrassed to admit, but J. M. Coetzee became my favorite writer purely by chance. At seventeen and one day old, I went straight to the downtown library. With the help of the reference desk clerk I found a book that listed every writer that ever won The Nobel Prize in Literature. From Sully Prudhomme to Herta Müller, I took in the (mostly) updated list, along with the (mostly) complete bibliography associated with the recipients. It was incredible. It was humbling. Not because of what these names meant to the field of literature—the flame of innovation they had inherited, fed, and passed along brighter—while I was still searching for that spark to ignite my writing. No. It was crushing because out of the hundred names on the list I only recognized a few. Of the names I did know, I’d only read one book (sophomore year Ms. Sweeney assigned Of Mice and Men for extra credit). Give it to chance, I thought. I took my mother’s birth year, 1969. Samuel Beckett would be my new favorite writer. As the book stated, for his work where the “destitution of modern man acquires its elevation,” he would be my mentor.

  In the beginning I attributed Ellis’ shy demeanor to him being a bookish boy. Small boned. He never ran in the sprinklers with the other kids. Never collected bugs in a kill jar or broke glass bottles under the streetlights. But as a young man, a softness remains. There’s something he didn’t outgrow. He’s not strong and rigid like most men. In that he’s lacking.

  To me, a straight man demands. He takes what he wants. But my boy said things like, “It’s okay Mom, order the pizza with olives. I can pick them off.” Not only that, his wrists often dangled. God, on the treadmill—those limp little hands. Dainty and useless, like a T-Rex.

  Through the slatted door, she tells me her name is Marion. I had never met a Marion before.

  “I’m going to check on another customer. Let me know if you need a different size.”

  I wanted to start a conversation with her, but I didn’t know how. Besides, I figured this was the wrong place for that anyway. I pressed my ear against the door and listened to her walk down the hall.

  When I came out of my booth, Marion was waiting for me by the mirrors. She leaned both shoulder blades against the wall, her arms slinking at her sides.

 
; “Looks good on you,” she said.

  I liked the coolness in her voice.

  “The cut is amazing.”

  After two books I felt destitute. I needed to find a new mentor.

  Ellis strode out of the dressing room. His mouth choked a smile and his eyes were airy. “Be honest.” He turned to the side and ironed his palm down the placket. “I love the cut.”

  What kind of man says “cut”?

  I shifted my weight and examined the shirt. A pale blue oxford with yellowed buttons. Too bland for the new Ellis. I turned him around and flattened the fabric across his back. His shoulders were angular and biting. He had the body of a gazelle. “I think we can do better. We want to make an impression, right?”

  I’d told Mom it wasn’t necessary, shopping and all. I was fine with a simple, casual dinner. In fact, I told her that Coetzee would most likely prefer it. He was an ascetic after all. But she insisted that was all the more reason we should flair it up. Flair it up. Her words, not mine. I tried to tell her that ascetic had nothing to do with art and beauty, but Mom wouldn’t have it. She wanted gusto.

  Marion was right. I looked good in this shirt. With her, I felt a confidence I normally couldn’t carry.

  How those words resonated in me. I knew she was paid to say things like that, but I could tell she meant it. That bored look Marion wore served only as a disguise. She took pride in being earnest. And like me, I think she was an artist at heart. She liked transforming things.

  In this shirt I felt like I could talk to her. With a little flair, I knew I would survive the night.

  Maybe Mom was on to something.

  In a random stroke of luck (maybe that’s how love works if you put yourself out there) an essay I was reading about Beckett happened to be penned by J. M. Coetzee. It was a name I recognized from the Nobel list. I went back to my librarian again and asked her, “What’s good by Coetzee?” For some reason she gave me a slight grin.

  “Excellent choice.” She disappeared down the stacks. When she returned, she had two books cradled across her stomach. “If I was you, I’d try these on.”